FEBRUARY 23, 1999:
When Ireland's Denis Halliday resigned as the United Nations
Humanitarian Aid Coordinator for Iraq last year, he said that economic
sanctions designed to punish Iraqi president Saddam Hussein were hitting
another target: the country's people.

Halliday, who left the United Nations in protest after three decades,
contends that sanctions have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis while doing nothing to diminish Hussein, once an ally and now an official enemy.

On a visit to Boston last week, Halliday -- who spent 13 months in Iraq --
spoke with the Phoenix about what's wrong with sanctions policy and what people here can do about it.

Q: For many in the United States, our image of Iraq is one of lights
from exploding bombs seen from overhead. You have been on the ground, though.
What's it like?

A: It was a country that had massive oil reserves and income and
decided to go first class in terms of standard of living, education, health
care, social services, parks, facilities. It was a great place to live for a
long time, until they got involved in this war with Iran, for which they paid a
huge price in terms of life and significant damage to the infrastructure in the
south particularly. Even Baghdad was bombed by the Iranians. It greatly
undermined the economy and the well-being of the economy. Then they got
involved in the Kuwait debacle and paid a very high price for the coalition
bombing. That bombing is visible today. Contrary to the provisions of the
Geneva convention, the coalition forces set about dismantling and destroying;
"back into the Stone Age," that was [George] Bush's request. The civilian
infrastructure, water-treatment plants, education, agriculture . . .
the whole thing was just destroyed, incredibly effectively.

The impact of that is still being felt. The Iraqis, thanks to sanctions, have
never had the resources to rebuild. . . . Baghdad itself is a
very depressed, dirty, decaying city with garbage all over the place, parks
dried up for lack of water. There was a huge social price that you do not hear
about a great deal. Probably two million Iraq professionals have left the
country. There were already one million widows from the Iran-Iraq war. You
have lots of families falling apart, lack of parental care, children are taken
out of school to go on the streets begging, crying.

And I am setting aside the death and the mayhem of what sanctions have done to
food supplies, nutrition levels . . . which is leading to the death
of three, four, five thousand Iraqi children under five per
month. . . . Malnutrition is being sustained at 30 percent.
Some of that is chronic, which is destroying the next generation in terms of
their physical and mental development.

Q: You mention the human toll of the sanctions. Walking through
Iraq, where do you see that?

A: There are about 10,000 schools in Iraq, and 8000 need to be
rehabilitated. Kids are sitting on the floor without desks . . .
10,000 teachers have quit. There is a shortage of pencils, books, boards,
chalk, many of which were proscribed by the sanctions commission here in New
York. The education system, which was once one of the prizes of Iraq, without a
doubt one of the strongest systems in the whole Mideast region, has been
largely destroyed.

The public-health system, which was of fantastic quality, equal to parts of
Europe in the 1980s, has collapsed. There is no preventive medicine available.
The hospitals are a nightmare. There is literally sewage in basements.

Q: How much support for sanctions is there outside the United
States?

A: Right now I would say apart from the Unites States and the UK, the
other member states would lift sanctions, but not just like that. There would
have to be a quid pro quo. They are going to want to have some reassurance of
international monitoring of arms capacity in the country and . . . of
arms sales to the country; not just to Iraq but to the entire Middle East. Iraq
today is the weaker brother in a very dangerous neighborhood. The Iranians are
armed to the teeth. The Israelis are armed beyond the teeth. The Turks, the
Syrians, these are dangerous people. And they [have been] damn more aggressive
than the Iraqis the last couple of years. Who has been flying low over Beirut?
Not the Iraqis. Who has been invading Kurdistan? Not the Iraqis. It has been
greatly exaggerated, their capacity. . . . [Saddam Hussein] is a
dangerous weapon in his own right, as are sanctions, of course. So there is a
huge problem here of what to do next. Lifting the sanctions does not solve the
problems, but it is a beginning in the right direction. But it has to be
married to international arms monitoring and some discipline on the part of the
member states. Particularly the five permanent members who sell 85 percent
of the [region's arms] capacity. They have got to police themselves, to
diminish sales.

Q: The situation in Iraq must seem remote for many Americans. What
can someone here do about Iraq?

A: They are personally responsible if they do not stand up and
. . . put pressure on Congress and senators and go to Washington. Do
all the things that citizens in a democracy can do. Someone said the other day,
"We are not subjects. We are citizens." Stand up and do your thing, folks. This
is a democracy. You have no excuse. Until we do that we are all guilty, as far
as I am concerned. We are guilty of genocide. There is no other word for
killing thousands of people. If you take the most conservative figures, we are
talking a quarter of a million people in the last seven or eight years. Some
people think it is more like a million. I think it is more like a million
myself. So individuals have got to stand up and take an activist role, like was
accomplished during the Vietnam War, those difficult years. It worked. It does
work.